


Oh, Pinions

by mousecookie



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, M/M, Wingfic, because why the hell not, glossing over plot in favor of character moments, overuse of the word "floof", set in S2 canon, with one very important difference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:47:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24759565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousecookie/pseuds/mousecookie
Summary: There was something strange about the doppelganger of Dr. Wells who arrived from Earth-2.  He was grouchy, and secretive, and there was that thick black trench coat that he never seemed to take off...
Relationships: Cisco Ramon/Earth-2 Harrison "Harry" Wells
Comments: 23
Kudos: 97





	Oh, Pinions

**Author's Note:**

> So I really don't know what bit me, because I wrote this fic in just a few days after intending to make a silly 500 word drabble for Harrisco Fest 2020. Nearly 9k words later, here we are. The prompt was "wing kink", but I've taken a more PG approach here, so I've labeled it "wingfic" instead. It is very silly and I hope you like it.

The night Barry was almost chomped in half by King Shark, he was saved by a stranger wearing a familiar face: Dr. Harrison Wells, who claimed to be from a parallel earth. 

This unsettling doppelganger looked nearly identical to their own Dr. Wells. His hair was a little wilder, perhaps, and his language less measured, less formal. And there was also the bulky black trench coat he never seemed to remove. But on the whole, the likeness was uncanny.

Cisco edged around him with mistrust. He called him _Harry_ to try and separate him from the memory of a hand being shoved into his chest. It only sort of worked. 

When Team Flash decided on a tentative alliance, Harry took up residence in the STAR Labs basement level. The thick black trenchcoat remained a constant fixture. Cisco wouldn’t have been surprised if the man slept in it. He actually had checked the security feed for the basement once - not to be creepy, okay, but just to determine whether their houseguest was up to mischief - and found that Harry had disabled the camera. Cisco went down there in person to make sure there was nothing amiss, and found nothing out of the ordinary. Just an empty basement room with two lonely cots. There were some storage boxes, and a stray black feather that must have migrated in from outside at some point. There were always crows hanging out in the trees outside.

So no, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing visibly nefarious.

Perhaps this Dr. Wells simply liked his privacy.

And it certainly seemed to be the case - Harry was downright prickly when it came to questions or contact he hadn’t instigated himself. In particular, he didn’t react well to Cisco’s attempts to catch a Vibe off him in the workshop.

“Don’t touch me,” he growled, swatting away Cisco’s hands. He was sitting on a backless shop stool, and his heavy black coat reached the floor. It looked swelteringly hot - the fabric so thick and bulky, it gave the man a bit of a hunch on his back. Or maybe he had a hunchback, who knew. In the days since his arrival, Cisco had still not seen him without it.

“It’s so hot in here, let me get your coat,” Cisco insisted, unwilling to give up on his mission to get more information. His fingers just barely brushed the black wool.

“I said don’t touch me,” Harry snarled, whirling.

Cisco put both hands up, placating. “Okay, okay,” he said, “No touchy.”

He left. The mystery remained.

Or at least, it remained until Harry and Jay got in a fight the next afternoon. The two men despised each other, that was clear - and it didn’t take too many verbal jabs before they came to real blows. Jay oddly seemed to be targeting Harry’s trench coat as they grappled, trying to pull it off. Barry was about to step in when Jay wrenched down the heavy black wool from Harry’s shoulders.

Cisco had been prepared for a hunchback, or maybe a hidden rocket launcher pack or something.

He was not prepared for a mass of black feathers bursting forth, expanding and shifting as Harry extended his _wings_ in a threat display against Jay.

 _Wings._

Like a crow’s or a ravens, but sized for a 6-foot tall man. Through his shock, Cisco idly mused that this would certainly help visually differentiate Harry from murderous Dr. Wells.

Jay, however, did not seem shocked at all. He took advantage of the group’s distraction and tried to grab a handful of Harry’s feathers. Harry flicked them back out of reach, then hunched and turned to the side. The furled wing facing Jay twitched threateningly.

“You wanna break bones?” Harry gritted out warningly. “I won’t hesitate.”

“Oh, like swans,” Cisco’s mouth decided to say. 

Everyone looked at him, even Harry and Jay.

Cisco babbled, put on the spot. “Uh… you know, swans? Can like, apparently break a kid’s arm with a wing-snap attack? I’ve heard?” He cursed the propensity for his brain to dispense factoids when it was least helpful.

“That’s false,” Harry replied, because of course he’d stop a fight in order to be an asshole in a different way. He glared warningly at Jay. “True for mine, though.”

Jay straightened up. Though some tension remained, it no longer seemed like he was going to try to physically attack. He crossed his arms and looked Harry up and down. 

“You’re sure about that? You’re looking weak, Harrison. Unkempt.”

Harry ruffled his feathers - and wasn’t _that_ a weird thing to mean literally - and scowled. Now that Cisco was looking more closely, he could see that Harry’s wings did look… bedraggled. The black feathers were dull rather than glossy. Some of the longer ones were crooked. Some of the shorter ones were bent the wrong way entirely. As he shifted, it became evident that the outermost primaries - the pinions - had been shorn completely.

Jay smiled, knife-like. “Oh, and would you look at that. You’ve been clipped.”

Harry’s wings snapped out in irritation. A small, fluffy feather from near his shoulder blade was dislodged and wafted over to land at Cisco’s feet.

“Zoom,” Harry hissed. “Zoom did this to me. Remember him? He’s the reason we’re both here. The reason we’re trying to find a way to _beat_ him.” 

Drawn by the magnetism of curiosity, Cisco bent and picked up the small feather.

His vision swam and tilted blue, and he saw --- _a girl in a cage, weeping. Wait, not a girl: an angel, her white and grey wings flapping uselessly in the confined space. She tugged fruitlessly at the bonds on her wrists, twisting to get away from the menacing figure who approached: Zoom._

_“I know Wells went to the other Earth,” Zoom growled. “Why?”_

_The girl cried. “I don’t know!”_

_“Your loyalty is admirable,” Zoom said, advancing into the cage with lightning on his fingertips. “But your father will not save you,_ **_Jesse_ ** _.”_

 _The girl screamed---_ and Cisco was in his own mind again, gasping for breath.

“Jesse,” he echoed.

Harry’s focus seized upon Cisco like talons closing. He spied the feather in his hand and advanced on Cisco, much like Zoom had just done in Cisco’s vision. Cisco backed into a table, pulse rising.

Harry grabbed his shoulders. “You’ve seen her? You saw Jesse? What did you see?” he pressed, nearly shaking Cisco. His ink-black wings were half unfurled, feathers fluffed in alarm.

Barry moved to intervene, but Cisco waved him off. “It’s okay! It’s his daughter. Zoom has his daughter.” He looked at Harry. “She’s alive.” 

Like a wire cut, Harry’s posture fell slack and he released Cisco, taking a few steps away to lean back against the opposite table. His feathers flattened back down, too. It was remarkable how expressive they were. Cisco found himself reminded of the way Studio Ghibli films portrayed hair, as though it could move in response to the character's emotions.

“You have a daughter?” Barry asked.

Harry nodded. He told them the basics of his situation - how his particle accelerator had failed and created Zoom. How his mistake had come to haunt him, and stolen the person he loved most. How he’d do anything to get her back.

“And the _Angels in the Outfield_ routine?” Cisco asked. “Was that from the dark matter?”

“No,” Harry said. “Wings are a natural human phenotype on my earth. Uncommon, recessive trait. Like red hair. I quickly realized you don’t have it here.”

“Wild,” Cisco replied.

“Seeing as I’m perfectly civilized, I’d say not,” Harry replied.

“ _Mmm_ are you sure about that?” Cisco asked. He absently brushed the loose feather against his knuckles. 

Harry spotted the movement, and for some reason, his cheeks took on a pink tinge. Maybe it was a personal thing to be holding someone else’s feather? Cisco couldn’t be sure, but he enjoyed that it was putting Harry off balance. He twirled the feather in his fingers,

“So you were born with those, then,” Caitlin said. She looked fascinated. Cisco could practically hear her biogenetics wheels turning in her mind.

“Yes,” Harry said bluntly.

Her eyes lit up. “Can I run some tests--?”

“No,” Harry snapped. Caitlin sat back in disappointment, but didn’t push.

A tense silence took the room for a moment.

Cisco broke it. “We’ll get your daughter back,” he told Harry.

“Yeah,” agreed Barry, painfully earnest. “You don’t have to worry. We’ll find a way, I promise.”

“Just like that?” Harry asked them both. “You learn I’ve lied to you this whole time, just like your own Dr. Wells, and you still shift gears, just like that?”

“You’re not him,” Cisco said, and truly believed it himself for perhaps the first time. “Thawne only cared about himself.”

Barry nodded his agreement.

Harry looked back at him, stiff and unreadable, then addressed the group at large. “Okay. So. Defeating Zoom.”

\---

After the reveal of his wings, Harry left off his trench coat when he was inside STAR Labs. It was a trip every time Cisco caught sight of him and saw the wings all over again. They remained messy-looking, like his wild chestnut hair. Some of the bent feathers looked particularly uncomfortable, but Harry didn’t seem to want to spend time or energy to tend to them. 

Cisco pitied him, a bit. Not that Cisco was all warm and fuzzy to him now, or anything! But understanding Harry was a desperate father explained a lot. It was a relief, too, to have something - wings, a daughter - to separate Harry from Dr. Wells. 

He watched Harry wince as one of his crooked feathers jammed into the back of a chair, and thought about offering to help. To bend it back, or clip it, whichever would be most helpful.

“Shouldn’t you be working?” Harry asked him, glaring when he found Cisco watching him.

...On second thought, never mind. Harry was a dick who probably wouldn’t accept his help anyway. There were other things to worry about, too - like capturing Dr. Light, and then what the hell to do about Gorilla Grodd snatching Caitlin.

Later, they were strategizing in the cortex.

“He’s a thousand-pound gorilla,” Barry was saying helplessly. “What do we use?”

“We use me,” Harry said from the doorway. There was something yellow and horribly familiar held in his hands.

It was the yellow suit. The Reverse Flash suit. Cisco hated seeing it, even when it was empty. He had this crazy fear that it would somehow come to life, or summon its master. 

“Points for imagination,” he said slowly, “but do you really think it will be convincing with your--” he pointed at Harry’s wings, “whole _City of Angels_ routine?”

“Just call them wings, Ramon,” Harry bit out, irritated.

Cisco crossed his arms. “Wings! Yeah, fine. Um. Don’t think those are gonna… fit in the suit.”

Harry rolled his eyes. He was always rolling his eyes at Cisco. “We cut the back open, and I wear the trench coat.”

Cisco’s own suit-making sensibilities were chafed by this idea. “Cut it open?!”

The stare Harry gave him was flat. “What, were you keeping it preserved for him to come back to?”

“No!” Cisco protested, shuddering a little. “I just! I know how much work goes into--” He broke off, seeing Harry’s raised eyebrows. “You know what, fine, we can cut the suit. It’s not like I made it, anyway. I would have done it better.”

“I’m sure,” Harry drawled.

“The real question is, will the suit be enough?” Barry asked, crossing his arms. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the yellow suit since he saw it. “The Dr. Wells we knew didn’t go around in a trench coat.”

“I’ll just have to be convincing,” Harry said, like it was easy.

“I don’t think you will be,” Cisco said slowly, thinking of the Harry he’d gotten to know in the past few weeks. He was a dick, for sure, but he was _different_ from Eobard Thawne in many ways that mattered. “And I mean that as a compliment.”

Harry blinked at him. “We’ll make it work. We have to.”

“Yeah. I know,” Cisco sighed, and nodded. “Caitlin’s counting on us. Come on, my workshop. Bring the suit.”

They went. 

Harry was oddly agreeable as Cisco stood behind him to measure the position of his wings with tailor’s measuring tape. 

It was the closest Cisco had gotten to Harry - or to his wings. Up close, the dark feathers looked soft and smooth, despite Harry’s obvious lack of self-care. Cisco resisted the urge to touch them. Instead, he was quick and professional with his tailor’s tape, because he himself was a goddamn professional, thank you very much.

Very soon it was time to cut up the suit.

“I’ll need to detach the cowl, make a shoulder strap above and below the wing-holes,” Cisco murmured to himself as he measured and marked. 

Harry watched him, impassive except for the sharpness of his attention.

Cisco swallowed and picked up his heavy-duty laser shears. He set them against the yellow material, and hesitated. His lizard brain wanted to think that if he damaged the suit, Eobard Thawne was going to come bursting in, angry and terrifying. 

“It’s just a suit,” Harry’s voice cut through the miasma of his thoughts. “It’s not the man.”

Cisco looked up at him, startled, then pursed his lips and glared back down at the yellow suit. “I know that,” he said.

He took a breath and started cutting. His laser-shears sliced through the thick leathery material like butter. Slice, slice, slice. It was exhilarating, in a way. Liberating. The yellow suit had been sitting on a mannequin in the Time Vault all this time, empty and haunting. Cisco honestly didn’t know why they’d decided to keep it in the first place, except that Barry liked to go in there sometimes and brood at it. 

Once he got into the motion, Cisco found destroying the Reverse Flash so satisfying that he had to stop himself from carrying on until the suit was cut to ribbons. They needed it so that Harry could help save Caitlin, after all. Cisco was a goddamn professional, and even if he hated the suit, he was going to tailor it perfectly.

When he was done, he looked up and found Harry watching him with a slight smile.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Harry asked.

“No,” Cisco agreed.

Harry’s wings twitched and resettled on his back in a self-satisfied kind of way that matched his smile. “Well, let’s go fool a thousand-pound gorilla.”

With the tailoring complete, the suit fit Harry just fine. With the added touch of Harry mimicking a few choice Thawne quotes, Cisco deemed him “as good as it’s gonna get”.

They did fool Grodd, if only briefly, but it was enough.

Caitlin was saved. 

Harry escaped with only a small injury.

Back in the cortex, Caitlin stitched up Harry’s side, and the group was stitched a little more closely together, too. Harry felt more like part of the team than an interloper, now that he’d risked himself to help them.

Cisco felt a huge confidence boost from his experience cutting up the Reverse Flash suit. He rode the high all the way to Jitters to ask out the pretty barista he’d been chatting up for the last week: Kendra.

His day was made when Kendra said yes, and gave him her number. 

His day was less made when he started getting visions of feathers and wings whenever they touched. Why was it happening? Were they visions about Kendra, or... were his wires crossed about Harry? Because he had to admit, now that he could separate Harry from Thawne in his head.... Harry was pretty hot. Even with the whole “brooding dark angel” vibe. Er, especially with the broody dark angel vibe? It was an awkward time to catch a crush, especially when Harry was such a dick. Well, sometimes. The rest of the time he was sort of okay.

Cisco did his best to ignore the visions and focus on romancing Kendra. He went through a rollercoaster of emotions when it turned out that the visions _were_ about Kendra, who most probably _also_ had wings.

It was a goddamn invasion of winged people.

Attractive winged people.

Well, Cisco supposed, there were worse invasions to have.

“Do you think Kendra came from whatever genetic line survived on Earth-2 to become people like you?” Cisco asked Harry as they labored in the workshop. Well, Harry was laboring. Cisco was spinning in his chair and chatting. “Like, maybe it used to be on this earth, but it died out back in ancient times.”

“I don’t see why not,” Harry replied, uninterested. 

Cisco had thought Harry would be relieved to hear about another winged person on this earth, but he hadn’t seemed eager to hear anything Cisco had to say about Kendra. He’d worn his trench coat when she came into STAR Labs, and hadn’t taken it off since.

“I bet she’ll look amazing when she’s flying,” Cisco continued.

Harry clanged a wrench on the desk. “If you’re not going to be useful, get out.”

“This is my lab!” Cisco retorted. “You can’t kick me out.”

“Then _focus,_ Ramon. Or go... _swoon_ somewhere else.”

Cisco didn’t deign to respond to that. He was not swooning, he was admiring the beautiful concept of flight, which Harry should really understa-- oh. Ohhhh. Oh no. Harry’s wings were clipped. No wonder he wouldn’t want to hear about flying! Cisco was a jerk.

“Hey, why do you sleep in the basement?” Cisco asked, switching tracks.

“What?” Harry grunted.

“The basement,” Cisco repeated. “It’s like, the last place I’d expect a winged person to want to be. No windows, all cement.”

Harry shrugged. “It’s where there was bed space.”

“Yeah, but we could have _moved_ it,” Cisco continued, squinting at Harry. “We could have dragged it all upstairs or something.”

Harry’s wings twitched. “It doesn’t matter. I need to work on this, so if you could--?” He looked pointedly at the door.

“Just tryin’ to help,” Cisco said, putting up his hands.

He left to go find Kendra. Kendra who was nice, and sweet, and gorgeous, and was totally into him.

Then, of course, Kendra was revealed to be a reincarnated high priestess hawk goddess, with a reincarnated high priest hawk god lover who had a square jaw and a six-pack and, oh yeah, _also_ had wings.

“Invasion of the attractive winged people,” Cisco muttered under his breath, even as they worked furiously to try to locate Kendra after said reincarnated high priest hawk god lover _swooped out of the sky_ and carried her off.

“What was that?” Caitlin asked from the seat next to him.

“Nothing,” Cisco grumbled. 

Then, with less fuss than expected, Kendra was back at STAR, and she was determined to manifest her powers to fight her nemesis Vandal Savage. 

Cisco did his best to help her, but reassuring words and half-formed technological solutions didn’t seem to be striking the right tone. They were up on the roof when Kendra had the insane idea that she might need to just… try it. Try flying, even without her wings in sight.

“That’s crazy!” Cisco told her as she stood on the edge of the building. His blood raced with panic. “Come down, we’ll talk this out, calmly, and _rationally_ , okay?”

“I don’t know, Cisco,” Kendra told him, turning her face into the wind and shutting her eyes. “I think this might be the only way.”

“I agree,” said Harry, who had just climbed up the stairs. He was sweating in his trench coat as he approached. His commitment to keeping his wings a secret from Kendra was as impressive as it was baffling.

“What?!” Cisco squawked. “Harry, no, this is crazy! Help me get her down!”

“Okay,” Harry said, and unceremoniously shoved Kendra off the roof.

Kendra shrieked, and for a second Cisco was seized with horror. He lurched to look over the edge where Kendra was falling, falling--! Then, the shriek turned into a whoop of joy, and Kendra reappeared, soaring upwards on dark brown wings.

“Fledglings always need a push,” Harry said smugly.

“You pushed her off a _building!”_ Cisco said, outraged.

“Uh, yeah, I did,” Harry answered, full of attitude. “And oh, look at that.” He waved at Kendra wheeling happily in the clouds.

“She could have died!” Cisco protested.

“She didn’t,” Harry pointed out. He shrugged, and Cisco knew now that he was also readjusting his wings under the heavy trenchcoat. “Besides, I’m sure Allen could have saved her before she hit the ground, if it came to that.”

“Not cool, Harry,” Cisco told him firmly. 

When Kendra returned from her first flight, Cisco was all smiles for her, and he ignored Harry completely. He was not at all bitter when at the end of all the Vandal Savage business, Kendra left him to join her reincarnated high priest hawk god lover.

Not bitter in the slightest.

Harry, however, seemed happy to remove his trench coat after she departed.

\---

Thoughts of Kendra-related angst were scattered far from Cisco’s mind by the return of the Reverse Flash. He was blonde and haughty and not yet the Dr. Wells who would one day shove a hand through Cisco’s heart, but his presence was deeply unsettling.

Cisco rubbed absently at his chest each time he saw the Reverse-Flash on a monitor, remembering the ghost of pain that had technically never happened. When they caught the yellow speedster, Cisco went down to the pipeline and gave a little defiant speech about how Thawne would one day be beaten. It wasn’t as satisfying as he hoped. Thawne didn’t seem phased, and unfamiliar face or no, his creep factor was off the charts.

As Cisco turned to go, a wave of pettiness swept over him.

“Oh yeah,” he said, turning back with his hand over the mechanism that would seal Thawne back up. “By the way, I cut up your suit.”

“What?” Thawne seemed indignant mostly out of reflex, not understanding.

“Yeah,” Cisco said, and held up his fingers in a scissors motion. “Snip snip, motherfucker.”

And then he closed the cell before Thawne could reply. He headed back to his workshop, mind buzzing like a beehive. He felt something tickle his nose and rubbed at it. His fingers came away red.

Huh. Nosebleed.

Must be from stress.

That evening, it became clear that it was very much Not Just From The Stress. As Cisco twisted and writhed in confused pain, half-corporeal, he distantly heard Harry shouting.

_“Keeping him here is killing Cisco!”_

The vehemence in Harry’s words was surprising. In the time Cisco had known him, Harry mostly snarked and sniped. When he yelled, it was about Zoom. Or Jay Garrick. But here he was, yelling about helping Cisco.

Being corporeal again was an immense relief. Honestly, Cisco hadn’t been sure Barry would choose to let the Reverse Flash go, after everything. It went against his central drive - justice for his mother’s death. Harry was not impressed with Cisco’s thanks to Barry, however, his wings ruffling and shifting before settling tightly against his back. 

“Well, I’m starving. Anyone want a Big Belly Burger?”

Food sounded amazing. “Two triple-triples,” Cisco said hopefully.

“You got money?” Harry drawled.

Cisco wilted, not able to muster the energy to engage in a sparring match. Almost being erased from existence was tough on a guy, you know?

Harry surprised him again by returning not only with two triple-triples for him, but also a strawberry shake.

“Aw, Harry, I didn’t know you cared,” Cisco said, fighting fatigue to move into an upright position. The food smelled amazing, greasy-hot and savory. 

“I think the answer to that is pretty clear by now, what with all the shoutin’ he did earlier,” said Joe, stepping into the room.

Harry spooked at the interruption, and Cisco’s vision was suddenly blocked by dark softness as a wing snapped out to cover him from view. The feathers floofed up defensively, brushing Cisco’s face and tickling his nose. He fought back a sneeze. Harry probably wouldn’t appreciate someone sneezing right into his feathers.

“Detective West,” Harry greeted stiffly, and then the wing was withdrawn. Harry fussed with the Big Belly Burger bag like nothing had happened.

“Wells,” Joe greeted, giving Harry a look that was equal parts knowing, warning, and amused.

“Your order,” Harry said, handing Joe a paper sack. “Double-double, extra pickles.”

“Appreciate it,” Joe said, then turned to Cisco. “How you holdin’ up?”

Cisco finally succumbed to a sneeze, sending a tiny downy feather fluttering in the air. “Good! Solid. Only in the dimensions I’m supposed to be in, I think.”

“Good.” Joe patted his ankle. “You rest up now. Been a long day.” He side-eyed Harry. “You too.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry waved him off, but it was more tired than grumpy. He rubbed the back of his neck.

Joe left with his Big Belly Burger.

Harry stayed and ate four triple-triples (a necessity with his high bird-man metabolism, apparently) with his booted feet propped up on the end of the cot. They ended up flicking ketchup packets at each other, and Cisco felt like normalcy had reasserted itself. Well, as much normalcy as you could get hanging out with a winged doppelganger of your old boss from an alternate earth.

A few days later, Cisco walked into the workshop and found Harry trying to clip one of his bent scapular feathers with a pair of wire cutters. He couldn’t quite contort his arm into the right angle, and it was clearly as uncomfortable as it was fruitless.

“You… want help with that?” Cisco asked cautiously.

Harry heaved an agitated sigh. “Yes,” he said, and sat on a stool as he held out the wire cutters.

Cisco took them and circled to stand at Harry’s back. The bent scapular feather stuck out like a flag. 

“Where should I clip this?” Cisco asked, hands hovering but not quite touching. 

“Preferably below where it’s bent,” Harry said. “But not so low that you’ll irritate the follicle. And don't tug it. It needs to molt naturally.”

Tongue peeping through his lips in concentration, Cisco carefully felt down the length of the bent feather. Whether on purpose or simply by instinct, Harry floofed the feathers up to make them easier to sift through. It made Cisco want to run his fingers through them. All the feathers he’d touched in his life had been cold - stray down from old pillows, a lost pigeon feather, the eagle writing quill he’d bought from a Renaissance faire - but Harry’s feathers felt alive. Their fuzzy bases held body heat close to Harry’s skin.

He found the sharp angle in the errant feather’s hollow quill, an inch or so above where it met skin. With a deft motion, he snipped it. Harry’s shoulders moved in a little shimmy, feathers lifting and resettling to match his relieved exhale.

“Better?” Cisco asked. 

“Much,” Harry grunted. 

Cisco eyed several other feathers that were bent, the ones that had been like that ever since Harry arrived. “I could… take care of some of these other ones, too?”

Harry licked his lips and shrugged. “Sure.” He opened his wings a little further in invitation.

As Cisco worked to carefully prune off the bent feathers, he noticed that there were quite a lot of places where short quills of new feathers protruded from the wing surface. Their tips were encased in a thin layer of papery keratin, keeping them tightly bound. They looked pokey and uncomfortable.

“Are these short stubby ones okay?” Cisco asked, gently tweaking one.

Harry twitched. “Pinfeathers. New growth. I’d open them up, but they’re hard to reach.”

“How would you normally do it on Earth-2?”

“There are salons that specialize in this kind of thing,” Harry said. “Sometimes Jesse helps.”

Cisco opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted when the meta alarm went off.

“Guys, we’ve got a sentient blob of tar!” Barry’s voice crackled on over the intercom.

Harry stood turned to face Cisco. His attention sharpened on the small handful of discarded feathers Cisco held.

“Um. Maybe I could help with that,” Cisco offered. “Uh, the pinfeathers. Another time.”

Harry gave him a searching look. “Sure. Fine. Another time.”

They rushed to the Cortex.

\---

Once the new meta Tar Pit was safely contained, Cisco found himself doing research on birds. He put Harry’s stray feathers in a pencil jar. He hadn’t felt right, throwing them away. They were so pretty.

 _Why do birds preen_ , he tapped into the search bar.

A website called BasicBird cheerfully supplied the answer: _Preening is a bird's way of grooming its feathers to keep them in the best condition. While preening, birds remove dust, dirt, and parasites from their feathers and align each feather in the optimum position relative to adjacent feathers and body shape. Most birds will preen several times a day to keep themselves healthy._

There was some stuff about different types of preening - dust baths, and water, and specialized feathers giving off some kind of powder. And something about birds having oil glands for preening?

 _I am NOT asking Harry about oil glands,_ he resolved, making a face. It was funny to imagine Harry giving himself a dust bath, though. Or frolicking in a public fountain. 

He snorted and continued his search for something useful.

This is how he ended up watching a Youtube video called “How To Preen Your Bird”. The host of the video was a portly man with a lime green parrot who gamboled around on his hands and shoulders. 

_“When they’re in their flock, the birds preen each other,”_ the host explained. _“It’s a community thing, one way they connect. Parents preen their babies, and mates preen each other. But if you have one bird, they can’t reach their own head and neck.”_ He pointed out a few places, then demonstrated a slight ruffling, rubbing motion with his fingertips to open up the tough ends of pinfeathers. _“Now as you can see, the bird kind of likes it,”_ he continued as the parrot floofed up its feathery crown. _“It’s a nice experience for them.”_

Cisco bit his lip. So, it sounded like preening Harry’s feathers would sort of be like… the equivalent of giving him a back rub, or a scalp massage. It made sense, but it also sounded sort of intimate. Cisco didn’t go around doling out back rubs and scalp massages to friends and acquaintances willy-nilly.

Well… as long as Harry didn’t mind, Cisco wouldn’t mind. The guy really looked like he needed some help, too, after months of not being able to reach. It must feel awful.

He nodded to himself, and headed to find Harry.

At the workshop, Harry was tinkering with some kind of device Cisco didn’t recognize. Harry quickly moved it aside, and in his distracted state Cisco didn’t think more about it.

“Heyyy,” Cisco said slowly. “Did you still want help? With the whole… feather situation?”

It felt too strange to call it preening.

Harry straightened up. He looked… guilty? Or maybe unsure. Cisco couldn’t tell which.

“Just offering,” Cisco said. He held up his freshly-washed hands. “I’m all scrubbed up and ready to go.”

Harry rubbed the back of his neck. His wing feathers ruffled up, then settled down again.

“Okay,” he finally agreed. He dragged a shop stool away from the tables, and sat on it. “To open the pinfeathers, you need to--”

“Gently roll the ends,” Cisco recited dutifully. “I watched a video.”

“You watched a video.”

“Yeah,” Cisco said blithely. “You know me. I research.”

“...Mm.”

Cisco cracked his knuckles. “Okay, let’s do this.”

Harry gave him a sweeping look, then swiveled in his chair to expose his back. He shifted his wings up and slightly open, feathers lifting. “If they don’t come apart easily, don’t force it,” he said.

Cisco nodded and plied his fingertips as gently as he could, rubbing the ends of the sealed pinfeathers until their casings fell away and the young feather within could fan out. When he finished a small area, he ran his fingers through them to get them more aligned with the surrounding mature feathers.

A shiver rippled down Harry’s back and all his feathers stood on end at once.

“Okay?” Cisco asked, removing his hands, afraid he’d hurt something.

Harry exhaled sharply. “Yeah. Fine. Keep going.” He unfurled his wings a little wider.

So, Cisco continued. He methodically sought out every pinfeather he could find, and gently tested if it was ready to open up. He worked through the scapular feathers near Harry’s shoulder blades, down to the covert feathers that rested above the long flight feathers.

Throughout all this attention, Harry didn’t make a sound, except to sigh occasionally. His shoulders were relaxed, his head was bowed. A quick peek showed Cisco that his eyes were closed, too, and his face slack. 

Cisco felt some pride that he was evidently doing at least _some_ of this right.

When he could find no more pinfeathers, Cisco instead traced mature feathers one at a time, smoothing them over, before sliding all ten fingers down the direction the feathers were aligned. 

Harry’s head lolled for a moment, then he stood and rolled his shoulders. With a great ruffling shake, he snapped his wings out to their impressive full extension. Cisco stepped back to take them in. It was rare that Harry stretched like this, and his wings were a sight to behold. 

They looked neater, now, too. More cared for. 

Cisco had done that.

From this position, Harry’s clipped pinion feathers were a stark interruption of the overall wing silhouette.

“Will those grow back?” Cisco asked, before he could stop himself.

Harry finished his stretch and folded his wings comfortable along his back, concealing the shorn feathers. “Eventually,” he said. “After they molt.”

“Oh, good,” Cisco said.

“Mm,” Harry said. He cast a glance at the peppering of shredded pinfeather casings on the ground, along with some stray down feathers no bigger than a fingernail. “Thanks,” he said gruffly.

“Yeah, no problem,” Cisco replied. “I can do it again, whenever you need.”

That guilty look was stealing over Harry’s face again. He turned away. “I have things to work on.”

“Okay, yeah,” Cisco said. They didn’t need to be weird about this. He swept up the feather fragments with a dustpan, and got to work on his own projects.

\---

Harry’s betrayal came out of nowhere.

“I told you, you shouldn’t trust me,” Harry told the gathered group as he plucked the speed-stealing device from Barry’s suit. Cisco recognized it as the gadget Harry had been working on when he’d offered to help with preening, and felt a pang. “I told you I’d always put my daughter first.”

It stung, but Harry’s actions also belied his harsh words. He was surrendering: offering himself up to be thrown back to Zoom’s clutches without help. Considering he’d disobeyed Zoom’s orders, it was as good as going back to his own execution.

Cisco was glad when Team Flash collectively decided to help him find Jesse instead. 

Plus, it meant going to an alternate earth, using the last stable breach from the particle accelerator explosion. How crazy cool was that? 

He might even see more winged humans.

The first of these was Henry Hewitt in Earth-2 STAR Labs, who was just a Normal Guy instead of the petty rage machine they’d known on Earth-1. He also sported speckled white wings, like an owl’s, held neatly composed down his back. A sign on the wall behind him said, in block letters, “ _For lab safety and courtesy, please do not fly indoors,_ ” with a silhouette of a winged person flying, and a large X.

When Barry spotted his own doppelganger on the evening newscast, he saw that his double had the fawn-grey wings of a kestrel that nicely complemented the dusky blue of his sweater vest.

“I have _wings_ here?” Barry gaped. “Well there goes my plan to swap places with him for a while.”

“That’s a terrible idea, anyway,” Harry told him, switching off the TV. “I suggest we make use of some of the technology I have here to find meta activity, and track Zoom’s movements. I brought some things from your earth that should enhance the system, beyond what it was previously capable of.”

“Good to know we do some things better,” Cisco said. He stole a wrapped gummy candy from a bowl on Harry’s desk and chewed it loudly.

“Only a few,” Harry replied, a smile tugging the corners of his mouth.

Cisco waited until he wasn’t looking, then shoved a small handful of the candies into one of his many pockets.

Their search for meta activity gave them a few different leads, and they split up to investigate. Cisco ended up at a warehouse, staring down unnerving evil doppelgangers of Caitlin and Ronnie - Killer Frost and Deathstroke, here - and then… himself. 

His own mirror image.

Except, not quite mirrored, because in addition to a topknot and an Attitude With a Capital A, his doppelganger had glossy blue-black starling’s wings, speckled with iridescence. They were spread proud and full as Reverb lectured him.

“It’s a pity you weren’t born with true greatness,” Reverb told him, sneering as he walked a full circle around Cisco. He flapped his wings so that they sent a flurry of dust into the air. “Forever stuck on the ground.”

“I get around just fine, thanks,” Cisco replied.

“You have some potential with your visions,” Reverb ignored him, stroking his chin in faux-contemplation. “But only _I_ can show you true power.” He clenched a fist and the ground shook. “I can command the vibrations of the universe. What nature puts together, I can tear apart. Join me, and I might teach you.”

When the ground stopped shaking, Cisco decided that he Did Not Like his Earth-2 counterpart. In league with Zoom, yes. Egotistical, yes. Bad taste in hairdos, also yes. Womp womp.

“Are you trying to recruit me after telling me I’m _ungifted?_ ” Cisco crossed his arms, unimpressed. “What is this, like, superhero negging? My self confidence is way too high for that, buddy.”

Reverb sniffed. “I am offering you a great honor.”

“Yeah, well you can stuff your honor somewhere the sun don’t shine,” Cisco replied tartly. “Get plucked.”

Behind Reverb, Killer Frost and Deathstroke both snorted.

Cisco was feeling pretty good about his bantering prowess. Unfortunately, once Barry arrived to check in, everything went to hell. The three Earth-2 metahumans attacked, Barry was injured, and then Zoom himself arrived. Zoom killed Deathstroke without ceremony. Despite disliking his doppelganger, Cisco was glad when Reverb took his chance to spring into the air before Zoom could turn on him. He high-tailed towards open sky, his wings a fluttering blur of urgency.

Barry stirred, and Zoom took his attention away from his fleeing subordinate. In a crackle of lightning he scooped up Barry and vanished. Killer Frost ran.

“Shit,” Cisco said.

\---

With luck, Cisco and Harry managed to track down and recruit Killer Frost to reveal Zoom’s hideout. The three of them trekked through the thick woods outside the city until they came to the sheer cliff that had once held a mine.

“That’s his hideout. You’d be able to zip on up there,” Killer Frost drawled, eyeing Harry’s clipped pinion feathers, “If only little birdie could fly.”

Harry stared at the mountain like it had personally done him wrong. His knuckles were white on the strap of his pulse-rifle, and his wings shifted in agitation.

“Hey,” Cisco put a reassuring hand on Harry’s shoulder, “It’s okay. We’ll get up there.”

“How?” Harry spat, frustrated. “I’m _useless_.” 

“Okay, one, you’re not useless,” Cisco replied. “Two, we have her.” He turned to Killer Frost, who raised her sculpted eyebrows at him.

“Me?” she asked archly. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Come on, Snow Queen,” Cisco said. “Show off a little. I know you could build a staircase to get up there.”

She looked like she wanted to refuse out of principle, but finally, she agreed.

“Zoom deserves to go down for what he did,” she said, grief and angry flickering in her expression.

Things happened quickly after that. They rescued Barry and Jesse, Zoom arrived, and Killer Frost fell to Zoom’s wrath. They barely escaped through the breach their Earth-1 crew had managed to stabilize, and had to leave behind the mysterious masked prisoner.

They made it back to Earth-1, safe and sound. 

Zoom killing Jay at the last moment was a devastating shock to them all. 

Harry, however, was far more focused on the fact that he had his daughter back. While Iris showed Jesse the gym showers and offered her spare clothes, Cisco found Harry dragging a twin mattress up from the basement.

“She can’t sleep down there,” Harry told him, slightly wild-eyed. “It’s a cage.”

Cisco grabbed the other end of the mattress to help, glad of a task to distract him for Jay’s death and Caitlin’s intense grief. “Totally. You know, there’s a spot in the main atrium where you can see a skylight, and the big windows out front. We can move some stuff around and make up a room for you guys.”

Harry’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Good. That’s good.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Cisco told him.

He’d often wondered why Harry had chosen to inhabit the basement to begin with. The more he learned about the man, the more he suspected that Harry had been punishing himself for not being able to protect his daughter. 

Well, Cisco was going to make a better space for both of them.

With old whiteboards, spare sheets, and a collection of random office furniture, there was soon a make-shift room in the atrium of STAR Labs. It held the two cots that had originally been down in the basement, a table, and a giant beanbag Cisco had dragged from the disused rec room. He didn’t tell either Harry or Jesse the thinking behind the bean bag, but privately he wondered if a nest-like object might be comforting. It really wasn’t clear how many birdlike characteristics were shared by the winged people of Earth-2.

When he visited them later with Thai food from down the street, Jesse was perched cross-legged on her cot in her borrowed clothes, with her white and grey wings hanging off the edge. Harry stood behind her, carefully preening her feathers with the intense care of a concerned parent. Jesse’s eyes were red from crying.

“Oh! Uh, sorry to interrupt,” Cisco said. “I have some dinner for you guys.”

“It’s fine,” Jesse sniffled, smiling determinedly. “I’m starving.”

She did look thin, too. Worryingly so. Cisco thought about Harry’s food intake, which was much higher than a normal human’s, if not nearly the magnitude of a speedster. Zoom must not have been feeding Jesse enough to sustain her increased metabolism.

“Hang on, I’ll be right back,” Cisco said, setting the Thai food down. He dashed off to grab a supply of Barry’s high-calorie speedster bars.

When he returned, Jesse was eating pad thai right out of the carton. Harry sat next to her, not eating, his eyes alert. One of his wings was draped protectively over his daughter’s shoulders, the feathers fluffed up for maximum heat retention. It reminded Cisco of a mother hen trying to cover baby chicks. 

Cisco smothered a smile and said, “Hey, I brought you some Barry-bars as a meal supplement. I made them to keep up with speedster metabolism, so they should work great for you too. I’ll just leave a stash here, okay?” He put the box on a table.

“Thanks,” Jesse said. There was a little more color in her pale cheeks now that she was eating.

Harry watched him closely as he left. His blue eyes were piercing in their focus, his face intense but otherwise unreadable. 

It was a little thrilling to have Harry’s attention like that. Cisco offered him a small smile, then disappeared back to the cortex.

\---

With Jesse around, Harry was much more demonstrative with his wings than he had been before. He was constantly herding her under them, and once Wally West started looking at Jesse with serious hearts in his eyes, Harry fanned them out once or twice to make them look big and imposing. It was ridiculous, and Cisco was rather fond of him for it.

“Are your wings like… a falcon’s?” Wally asked Jesse one morning.

“Yeah,” Jesse said, flexing them outward. “Closest match is a Peregrine falcon, actually. I’m fast.” She grinned.

“Cool,” Wally said, his smile sweet and bright.

Harry flexed his wings and knocked a beaker off a nearby table, startling both of them.

Cisco covered a laugh.

Harry continued to be overprotective.

“I’m not a baby,” Jesse finally complained, looking up at Harry through the floof of dark feathers that had settled over her for the _nth_ time as he stood beside her. Then, more softly, “I’m okay, dad. I’m not gonna break.”

Harry looked pained, but he pulled back his wing. “I know. You’re the strongest person I know. And the smartest.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Jesse said, and hugged him.

Harry rested his cheek on the top of her head and held her tight.

“Not to interrupt a very nice moment, but could I have a little help here?” Cisco asked faintly from across the room, where he had been constructing a small motor. His hair was getting longer these days, and in a moment of inattention the spinning machinery had happily eaten up several strands and gotten properly snarled up. “Ow,” he said. 

Harry gave Jesse one more squeeze, then let her go and approached Cisco. Jesse gave them both a look, bit her lip around a smile, then quietly slipped out.

“You’ve gotten yourself in a pickle,” Harry said as he examined the snarled mess.

“Yeah, I know, very funny,” Cisco rolled his eyes. “Get it unstuck, please? Preferably without just cutting it off? These curls are way too gorgeous to be lopsided.”

Harry hummed and pulled up a stool next to Cisco. With nimble fingers, he teased strands of Cisco’s hair away from the little gadget a few at a time. Harry was unexpectedly patient about the whole thing. He was methodical, and careful, and per Cisco’s request he didn’t break or cut any hair. 

Cisco found himself lulled by the process. It took about ten minutes, and at the end of it Harry pulled the motor free and set it on the desk. Cisco was about to thank him when Harry reached up again and carded his fingers through Cisco’s hair. The words evaporated in Cisco’s mouth, and he blushed. 

Harry only did it once, however, and afterwards he quickly stood, cleared his throat, and went back to his own workstation.

“Thanks,” Cisco told him belatedly, still feeling the ghost of the touch.

“Sure,” Harry said, not looking at him.

Something long and dark fell softly to the ground at Harry’s side.

“Oh hey,” Cisco said, perking up and pointing. “I think you just molted one of the long ones.”

Harry bent and picked up the feather. It was one of his clipped pinions. He looked at it for a long moment, then stuck it in the pencil jar Cisco kept on his desk to collect the bigger, nice-looking feathers.

“If you could, later, would you--” Harry said awkwardly, glancing up at Cisco. He gestured towards his back. “I have more pinfeathers coming in.”

Cisco blinked. “Jesse isn’t going to?” He recalled Harry saying his daughter had helped him preen, when he didn’t go to a salon.

Harry stared at him.

“I, uh, sure!” Cisco continued, flummoxed. He ran his fingers through his own hair, and recalled again the way it had felt to have Harry do the same. It had been really nice. “You got it.” 

He smiled at Harry, and there was an answering quirk of Harry’s lips.

\---

A few tumultuous months later, it was all over.

Zoom was dead. Jesse and Wally were speedsters. Barry’s father was buried. The man in the iron mask was unveiled as the real Jay Garrick. Cisco had learned to punch literal holes in reality which was _super cool_.

Their fight was done.

The next logical thing was for Harry, Jesse, and Jay to return to their original earths. After all this time, Cisco realized he really didn’t want Harry to go.

A few days before the group planned to depart, Cisco sought out Harry, determined to say… he didn’t know what. Something. Something to encapsulate how much he’d grown to appreciate Harry, and how much he would miss him.

Harry wasn’t in his lab, though.

Nor was he in the makeshift room in the atrium. Jesse was there, though, curled up in the giant beanbag with Wally.

“He’s on the roof,” Jesse told him, smiling. “I think he’s gonna do it.”

Cisco brightened with excitement. He was winded by the time he climbed the last staircase to the roof deck of STAR Labs. 

“We really need an elevator,” he panted, hands on his knees.

Harry was there on the roof. With his back to Cisco, he looked contemplatively out over the city, his wings unfurled. His newly regrown pinion feathers moved with the breeze, and Cisco paused to admire the sight. With the sunlight glinting off his glossy black feathers, and his wings whole and cared for, Harry was magnificent.

“Hey,” Cisco said, walking over to lean on the barrier next to him.

“Hi,” Harry answered. His messy curls were ruffled by the wind as he looked over at Cisco.

“It’s pretty cool up here,” Cisco said, tucking his hair behind his ears. “Seeing the sights one more time before you head back to Earth-2?”

“Mm,” Harry agreed. He lifted his wings to catch a puff of air that was slightly stronger. “And… thinking.”

Cisco looked at him sidelong. “You know there’s only one way to find out.”

“I know,” Harry groused. He took a deep breath. “It’s just… it’s been so long. Part of me wonders… if I even can anymore.”

“Ridiculous,” Cisco proclaimed. “You know that’s bullshit. Come on,” he slapped the cement barrier of the roof’s edge. “Step right up. Feel the wind in your feathers, or whatever. You’ll remember.”

Harry looked displeased, but with a flap and a hop, he was standing on the barrier.

“Ramon,” he complained. “This isn’t any better. I don’t thi--- _AAHHHG!_ ” 

His words were cut short as Cisco neatly pushed him off the edge of the roof.

“Payback’s a bitch!” Cisco yelled after him, grinning widely as Harry’s wings snapped open and caught the air, taking him out of freefall into a huge arc upwards as he rose on a thermal - higher, higher, higher, until Harry was a dark splotch against the fluffy white clouds.

Cisco whooped loudly, full of exhilaration on Harry’s behalf, his heart pounding. He shaded his eyes against the sunlight and tipped his head back to watch as Harry looped and wheeled, dipped and glided. His face hurt from smiling so hard.

After a minute, Harry flew lower and looped back on course to land on the roof. From where he was aiming, he was lined up _right_ at Cisco.

“Oh shit,” Cisco scrambled backwards, giggling madly as he ran from the Harry-torpedo headed his way.

Harry caught up to him easily. Huge backwing motions slowed him down at the last minute, so he didn’t quite tackle Cisco as much as knock him back a few paces, enveloping him with arms and wings alike.

Cisco’s snarky comment about landing precision was scattered to the wind as Harry kissed him fiercely on the mouth.

As soon as Cisco’s brain registered what was happening, little pieces of data from the last year fell into place - heated looks and lingering glances, working in sync, taking care of each other, the sizzling chemistry of their banter - and formed a complete picture of _holy hell, this is hot_.

“That good, huh?” Cisco said, breathing hard and grinning as Harry pulled away. “You this frisky every time you fly around?”

There was color high in Harry’s cheeks, and joy in his eyes. “Shut up, Ramon.”

And then he prevented any retorts with another kiss. 

Cisco did not mind in the slightest.

In the end, Cisco wasn’t sad about Harry going back to Earth-2. He was fledging in his own powers, after all - summoning breaches between worlds was getting easier with every attempt. The only thing Harry’s departure meant was that Cisco was going to be getting a _lot_ of practice.  
  



End file.
